EVOO Israel style

November 8, 2009 - 2:40 PM by Jessica · 1 Comment
Filed under: Business, Food, General, coexistence, design

It’s olive harvest time in these parts, which I was reminded of while passing [a possibly] public grove of olive trees on King David Street, in which several Arab women were picking and harvesting the crop.

Yes, charming and amusing and a reminder of the importance of olive oil, whether EVOO or other, in these parts. Now that Israel has beefed up on its boutique wineries, olive oil is the next cottage industry to hit the commercial mainstream, and enterprising olive oil producers are doing just that.

Here’s a nice little piece about four different olive farms…and if you can’t make it out to the farm — or the patch of olive trees on King David Street — just head over to liveO/Oil of Life in Mamilla or Tel Aviv, where their Negev Desert-sourced olive oil is packaged to perfection, whether as olive oil, straight; in soaps, jams (the Pear and Vanilla Jam is particularly good), or a myriad of other products.

According to the company, liveO produces five different lines of gourmet products based on their extra virgin olive oils, Picual, Souri, Barnea, Frantoio and Manzanillo. The oils are cold pressed, classified as extra virgin, and have a level of acidity not exceeding 0.5%. The gourmet line was created by Julian Attia, a French culinary advisor, inspired by the world of wines.

If you seek your own regular source of olive oil, LiveO will deliver a quantity of olive oil to your home monthly or quarterly, for a not insignificant sum. Or, you can cure olives yourself:

Olive-curing recipe:

Collect olives by hand in a clean plastic bucket to prevent bruising.
Day 1: Wash in running water. Add boiling hot water and allow to soak for 24 hours.
Day 2: Pour off cold water add more boiling water.
Day 3: Pour off cold water add more boiling water.
Day 4: Pour off cold water. Place the olives into clean jars and add a mixture of brine and white (or any other type) vinegar in the proportions of 3 to 1 by volume.

Brine = 10%w/v salt in water that is 100grams/litre of final solution

Fill jars well and add a layer of olive oil.

liveO: Mamilla Avenue, Jerusalem / 21 Rothschild Blvd., Tel Aviv

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Tags: EVOO, King David Street, liveO, Mamilla, olive harvest

Candles and sandals

May 13, 2009 - 11:21 AM by Jessica · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness

NK in the daytime

Lag b’Omer 2009 is over for another year, and the scent of bonfire smoke still hovers in the air, or perhaps that’s the smoke from the EVOO used on my stovetop cast iron grill for last night’s dinner. In any case, all the windows are being kept open to banish the smoky air that made its way inside.

But on erev Lag b’Omer itself, which, incidentally, is our anniversary (a very popular day to get married in Israel, since it’s a ‘day off’ from the 49-day Omer, during which Jews traditionally don’t get married), we attended the wedding of the daughter of a dear friend, held at Neot Kedumim, a biblical landscape reserve located just slightly north of Modiin.

It was one of those ‘only in Israel’ experiences, as we drove down a rocky lane to the parking lot, and then trekked over to the wedding ’site,’ where the makeup-free bride was surrounded by her headscarf-wrapped, guitar-playing, weeping girlfriends before the bedeken. The groom, when he approached to veil his bride, was outfitted like the rest of his friends in an untucked white shirt, khakis and Source sandals, the Israeli version of Chacos, and he was brought down in a fit of singing punctuated by the calls of a shofar being sounded by one of his buddies. He played a Bratslaver-like tune to his bride, but broke the tension of the moment with a wide grin directed to her, which she returned in kind.

We walked over to the site of the chuppah, down winding lanes situated between flowering pomegranate trees and silvery green olive trees, stooping to read the ground-level signs that offer biblical quotes about the trees, bushes and flowers planted all around. The chuppah was a tallit, the rabbi was casually serious and the bride, a dancer by training, tended to jump up and down during the lighter moments of the ceremony.

And when the ceremony was over, the new couple was danced over to their yihud space where they spent a good hour, before emerging to dance raucously but separately.

“They’re hippies,” said my husband. “Nah, they’re settlers,” said someone else, referring to the flowing shirts, dresses and sandals that can often be considered a uniform for some of the hilltop settler types. I thought of it as a wedding of Israeli Deadheads, but one thing is for sure: It was a wedding with a joyous vibe.

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